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Windows 7 user profile lost when you log off or reboot

Question

When you setup your desktop and change the picture in your user profile, then log off or reboot, Windows 7 loses those settings and restore to factory default. We are joined to a domain running Server 2003. How do I fix this problem?

You should find your profile key, with another named identically except for a ".bak" extension

Delete the "normally named" key

Rename the ".bak" named key to remove the ".bak" extension

Restart your machine

If you do not have administrative privileges, you will need to fist sign on with a user ID that does.

This will allow you to preserve all of the customization you "lost" without having to recreate everything. I have to do this at home all of the time.

The bigger concern is: "Why does this happen at all?"

The only thing I have found (fairly) consistently is that it occurs whenever we use "Switch Users". Recently, I have noticed that whenever one user is logged on and then computer "sleeps", the next user will "lose" their settings, even if they properly log off the previous user. Executing the fix above always brings the desktop back.

I have the same exact problem, Michael. I've been searching for a solution ever since I put windows 7 pro 32 on my desktop, but still no luck. In fact you are the first person I have found that has seemed to narrow this particular situation down to what I also believe causes the problem, switching users. I also know this happens when I log off from one profile and log on to another. For some reason, on my desktop, it happens every single time. But if I restart the computer, then I can log on just fine. I've even deleted one of the profiles all together and created another one with an entirely different name, but I'm still having the same problem. I think my next step will be to reinstall windows 7 all together. What's wierd is that I don't have this problem at all with my laptop with win 7 pro 64. It really gets me mad that microsoft hasn't come up with a solution for this at all. If they have, I haven't found it. Anyway, I'll stick with restarting the computer each time until I look into it further. Thanks for the tip and good luck. Actually, I'm gonna take what you said and I'm gonna see if disabling my desktop from sleeping will help any.

All the above are steps are very helpful and correct. They did correct all the ones we had issues with. There was a exception for a few accounts that had been added to our domain 8+ years ago. At that time these
users had been added to security group which prevented their profile from being saved in Windows 7 professional. Once we removed them from that group their profile worked.

This is a great fix and works. FYI I had this issue without switching logons. This has happened to me twice, the first time it fixed itsself after I logged off and on a couple of times. The second time I had just had an update form microsoft
and got the profile problem after rebooting to complete the install.

Thanks for the info...lets hope MS finds out what's causing this and FIXES it!

Realize, of course, that this is just a "Band-Aid" patch, not a "healing" or resolution to the problem.
Microsoft still needs to delve into this issue,
which has existed since at least Windows XP, and provide a true "fix".

Use CHKDSK to fix any disk error. How to use. Run command prompt as Administrator and run the following command CHKDSK /F Enter y when it wants to check at next reboot Now reboot and fix the registry !

I had the same issue on my domain account. The problem was the account was not a member of the domain users group but of the domain guest group. Removed the account from domain guests and added domain users. Problem was solved upon reboot.

Many thanks for the fix, it works, but sometimes for a while and the .bak reapears. I don't know WHY?

But i have maybe an answer for your question "Why does this happen at all?" I noticed that it happens for big or huge profiles

and the "State" value in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\SID is MAYBE connected to the profile dimension it can be evaluated by left clicking the profile directory (C:\Users\PROFILENAME) on the
filesystem.

To verify if this was true, i tried to clean the profile Directory it was really huge (46 Giga), it was full of configuration files, Pictures, movies, sounds file used by music software etc. But i did the sacrifice and canceled as much as i could. BUT
this didn't help. The only good solution has been this hack for the registry

This worked like a charm. Yes, this issue still is out there and it's a royal pain. I still don't know why it happens either, only thing I can figure is that on 6/13 updates were rolled out for office, windows and .NET the user shut down at the end of the
day after the night of the updates, and the system wasn't started again until this morning.

Unfortunatley the suggested fix did not work for me. I tried all variations of the fix on multiple different machines, to no avail. Deleting the profile directory on the DC and allowiong it to be created again did not work either.

The issue only appears to be affecting one of our domain users when they try to log on to a Windows 7 or Server 2008(Terminal Server) machine. XP does not seem to be affected.

If anyone else is still experiencing the issue, prehaps we could work together to try to come up with a solution. I think the only other option I have is to recreate the profile in question from scratch.

hello sir good evening... i need a help. i had a user profile named "Dell". and all data present in that download folder.

when i logged in system goes into the temporary mode. so i have opened the regedit and by mistake delete my user profile key that is "Dell". how to i recover that profile and all the data. i have tried the system restore also but not able to recover that
also. still system not restored its giving error. but it is any mathod to without recovery because i have tried all the method or restore also but getting failed please help me sir there is very impotent data my academic career depend on that i have my training
project and spend on that more than 6 month for that project please help me sir.

Your data should still be on your computer. In Windows Explorer Go to C:/USERS directory, select (left click) your user name. The subdirectory you stored the file in should be available. Copy wherever you wish, like your desktop. Operate from
there.

You should find your profile key, with another named identically except for a ".bak" extension

Delete the "normally named" key

Rename the ".bak" named key to remove the ".bak" extension

Restart your machine

If you do not have administrative privileges, you will need to fist sign on with a user ID that does.

This will allow you to preserve all of the customization you "lost" without having to recreate everything. I have to do this at home all of the time.

The bigger concern is: "Why does this happen at all?"

The only thing I have found (fairly) consistently is that it occurs whenever we use "Switch Users". Recently, I have noticed that whenever one user is logged on and then computer "sleeps", the next user will "lose" their settings,
even if they properly log off the previous user. Executing the fix above always brings the desktop back.

Any ideas, anyone?

PERFECT, Dmitry Bond. Solved.

A new Microsoft mistery. At least it hasn't deleted all my profile data.

I also executed sfc /scannow in a cmd in safe mode and it found and solved a bunch of system files issues.

The fact that you are affiliated with Microsoft, and that you tagged this as the answer, I was hoping that you clarify this solution.

If this will delete the profile that I wanted to recover in the first place, then you are actually killing the sick, instead of curing him. Please let us know what solution is the one to use.

Sunday, November 02, 2014 2:22 AM

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